Back in the day - you know back when servers were coal-powered and we did word processing by candlelight - I seemed to spend a lot of my time searching for and weeding out "inappropriate" files on my company's servers. Typically for that time, most were games, smut, jokes or cartoons. Usually I needed to do this to reclaim disk space. Fifteen years ago, I was happy to be able to pay $1,000 per gigabyte for disk storage, so managing its use was a necessary use of my time.

But with disk storage costs inching down towards $1 per gigabyte, there is more incentive to add disk rather than prune and weed your existing storage. Still, nowadays there are other reasons - such as legal and ethical considerations - in addition to simple space management that require you to keep firm control over the contents of your servers' file systems. People can be fined, fired or even jailed for the files they keep - or access - on your corporate servers.

Suppose there was a way to keep inappropriate files from even being written to the server, thus removing the necessity to constantly scan the system? Well, now there is.

"NetWare BlokFile" is a new tool that installs as an NLM on your NetWare server. Written by Hamish Speirs, a transplanted New Zealander, it's available for evaluation at The Caledonia Network Consulting web site (there's other good stuff at Caledonia also - explore the whole site).

According to Speirs, "BlokFile allows an administrator to block access to specific file types on the server. For example, you can block *.mp3 files being written to, or accessed from, users' home directories. File blocking can be done on file name/extension, and also on file finger printing - an .mp3 renamed to .txt can still be detected and blocked as an .mp3. The utility comes with a number of predefined fingerprinting definitions, and is fully user extensible."

As an example, loading BlokFile with the file specification "*.mp3" will prevent:

* Any new files with a .MP3 extension from being created.
* Any existing files with a .MP3 extension being opened or copied.
* Any existing files with a .MP3 extension being backed up.
* Any existing files with a .MP3 extension being renamed to a different extension.
* Any existing files being renamed to a file with a .MP3 extension.

The only operation that can be performed on a file that meets a BlokFile file specification is to delete it - and even that can be prevented.

BlokFile sells for $150 per server, or can be bought in combination with Speirs other new utility called "LogFile" at a discount. LogFile is similar to BlokFile, but is an auditing tool rather than a file maintenance tool. I know a lot of people running high school, college and university networks who could greatly benefit from this tool - perhaps you could, also.

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To contact Dave Kearns:

Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be found here.